Using a Linux computer in University halls

If you run Linux on a PC or laptop in halls of residence you may of realised that most universities are using 802.1x authentication on their networks. It’s great, secure all that. It can just be a pain to set up. I’m currently in halls at Bangor University and couldn’t figure out how to get it all working in Ubuntu or Crunchbang. To be fair, it’s pretty unreliable in Windows too… “Unable to authenticate!”… Grr but I digress.

I found this guide on Aberystwyth University’s website, and it worked great. Basically you need to download and make sure that wpa_supplicant is installed (It should be in pretty much all modern Linux distros), then create a config file for it using the details on the page linked. I’ll paste them below in case they ever take the page down.

Start up a command line interface and create a directory by typing:

mkdir /var/run/wpa_supplicant

Using a text editor create a wpa_supplicant.conf file in /etc/wpa_supplicant. Inside this file enter the following lines:
# BEGIN wired network configuration

You’ll have to do a bit of experimenting with the identity field. Aber wants your entire uni email whereas at Bangor I just needed my username for it to work. Try both until it works. I’m fairly certain these settings are going to be fairly universal for all uni’s who utilise 802.1x authentication systems.